


Disappointed

by skyeward



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyeward/pseuds/skyeward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: “Jackanda: High school AU - Miranda is literally a cheerleader, and Jack is one of the girls who hangs out with the tough crowd. The two however, have a slightly awkward, yet flirtatious run in after school in an empty hall way.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this didn’t quite follow the prompt, I got lost somewhere around ‘flirtatious’ and it ended up being all serious and feels-y.

“Whatcha doin’ there, _cheerleader?”_ The word is not a compliment, nor even a simple descriptor – it drips with venom. Miranda sits up, her back ramrod straight against the wall behind her, and glowers at the new arrival through her tears. She doesn’t even bother trying to dry her face – this is not someone whose opinion can affect her life, so there’s no point. She does close her legs, though – the cheerleading uniform was not meant to be worn while squatting in hallways, and she doesn’t want to give anyone a show.

“Oh, poor baby,” mocks Jack, swaggering over and squatting down uncomfortably close. She looks like every ‘Don’t Join a Gang’ PSA Miranda’s ever seen, from her weird half-shaved hairstyle to her studded leather half-jacket, cut-up camo pants, and heavy black boots. The steadily-increasing number of tattoos just seals the deal. It’s kind of hot actually, but the cheerleader would rather take a bullet than admit that out loud.

“Leave me alone,” Miranda hisses, hands on her knees and eyes pointed straight at the opposite wall, even when the tattooed girl moves in between her and it. The whole school buzzes with speculation about this girl, with everything from ‘murderer’ to ‘prostitute’ bandied about the hallways and cafeteria. The former Miranda can believe much more quickly than the latter, although she tries not to wonder where exactly Jack gets the money for all that ink.

“Oh boo-hoo, little cheerleader’s sad. What’s the matter, precious, didn’t make team captain?”

The blue-eyed girl’s back straightens impossibly further as she draws herself up sharply. It’s unexpectedly painful to hear from an outsider, even if she knows it’s most likely a lucky guess. There’s no way someone like Jack would even know when squad tryouts are, much less who got voted captain.

Jack snickers unpleasantly, rocking back on her heels and slapping one thigh. “Oh man, looks like I pissed off Little Miss Perfect. Look at me, I’m shaking in my boots! Go on, sit up straighter at me, let’s see if I can take it without pissing myself!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Miranda hollers, then claps one hand over her mouth. She glances at Jack to gauge the punk’s reaction – if she really is a murderer, this seems a likely time to reoffend.

Shockingly, she just laughs – a genuine, full-bodied laugh that sends the weirdest and most awkward butterflies ever through the cheerleader’s stomach.

“Oh ouch, the princess has a mouth on her after all! Well, princess,” she grins invitingly, “Why don’t you tell ol’ Jack all about it? Eh?”

There’s dead silence for a moment, Miranda slowly lowering her hand from her mouth when it seems that murder isn’t on the agenda this afternoon. 

“I’m not going to tell you,” she says finally, still not looking at her unexpected companion. “You’re just going to mock me, and I’m not in the mood.”

“Aww, c’mon, I’m not that bad.” She is, of course, but she’s apparently feeling playful at the moment. “I just figure it’s gotta be something pretty heavy if Her Majesty Princess Lawson the First is crying in a hallway with the chick half the school thinks is a juvie killer.” One inked hand nudges a uniformed shoulder – a little harder than strictly necessary, but with no real roughness. The cheerleader’s breath hitches, and she wonders if it’d be okay to take that bullet now – because she feels quite close to admitting how attractive she finds the punk.

“It’s Highness,” she says instead. Her voice is tear-roughened but otherwise clear, just like the bloodshot blue eyes that finally wander over to Jack’s face…Jack’s completely befuddled face.

“Huh?”

“For a princess, the title is Highness. Majesty is for queens. Or kings, I guess.” Jack just gapes for a second before grinning and clapping the other girl on the shoulder like a comrade-in-arms or something. Miranda tells herself that the butterflies didn’t just grow into bats, but self-deception is not her forte. A shame, because her life would be a lot easier if it were.

“Learn something new every day. Well, not really, I try to avoid learning shit, but whatever. Anyway, I’m still waiting to hear what’s so wrong in the life of royalty…I hate to see a pretty girl cry.”

That does it – she’s obviously insane. A slightly hysterical laugh bubbles up from Miranda’s chest, and she claps her hand back over her mouth to stifle it until she can get herself under control.

“That,” she gasps out at last, “That’s such a fucking line. Nobody really says that, do they?” Luckily, Jack doesn’t look offended. She doesn’t look amused either, but Miranda hopes there’s no violence in her immediate future.

“Nah, probably not. It’s a lie anyway,” she adds with a sneer, “I love to see pretty girls cry. The prettier and more broken-hearted the better.”

“That sounds like an opening to call me ugly,” Miranda retorts, feeling as though she’s getting the hang of this whole ‘conversing with possible murderers’ thing.

“That it was, sweet thing. That it was. Guess you’re pretty clever after all…must be keeping the rest of your brain that fine ass of yours. Anyway,” she nudges Miranda again, “Would you just fucking tell me what you were boo-hooing about already? I got places to be, shit to fuck up. You know, the usual.”

“Oh.” Miranda’s face, reddening from the crude but effective compliment, falls as the tears well up again. “You were right,” she mumbles. “I didn’t make cheer squad captain.”

Jack doesn’t find that answer especially amusing, it would seem, because she stares blankly at her companion for several long seconds before erupting in anger.

“Are you fucking _serious_ right now? _That’s_ why you’re crying in a back hallway after school? Fuck, and I thought it’d be something _interesting._ Damn Daddy’s money _bitches_ and their stupid problems!” Jack sounds disgusted now, and for some reason that is abruptly not okay with Miranda. She reaches out to grab the cuff of one leather sleeve, halting the other girl’s move away from her.

“It’s that, but it’s more than that. My dad…” she pauses, unsure of how to phrase it without making it sound like more than it is. It’s not like he’s _abusive._ He’s never hit her, anyway. “My dad’s going to be really upset,” she finally finishes, lamely. “He’s going to be…disappointed in me.”

It sounds so much less ominous when it’s not the man in question saying it.

At least Jack has settled down again, although she’s not saying anything. Her expression is somewhere between curiosity and sympathy, and Miranda wonders suddenly what her home life is like. She’s too afraid to ask, so she keeps talking instead, hoping to keep the other girl here for a little longer.

“He’s…he’s got high expectations for me, you know? I’m his _legacy.”_ That too sounds different from her own mouth, somehow weak and foolish. She repeats it, curious. “His legacy.”

“Shit, and here I thought you were his daughter. Your old man is really that rough?” The tattooed girl sounds honestly sympathetic, and Miranda glances at her, startled. That’s not something she ever expected to hear from the infamous Jack.

“I…I didn’t think so, until just now. He…everything I do, everyone I know, every sport or musical instrument or language I learn, he decides all those things, and then he pushes me and pushes me and pushes me until I’m the best. And if I make a mistake, he…I mean, he doesn’t hit me! He’s just _…disappointed._ That’s all. Disappointed.” She shuts her mouth, cutting off the barely-coherent flow of words, and tips her head back against the wall, feeling defeated.

Jack’s voice startles her out of her fugue a moment later, because it’s low and hurting and genuine. She’s shifted a little, squatting with her arms around her legs and her chin on her knees, eyes focused sightlessly on the floor. Miranda has never – probably nobody at the entire school has ever – seen the punk looking or sounding quite so much like an actual teenage girl, complete with feelings other than ‘cocky’ or ‘angry’.

“Yeah,” mumbles the brown-eyed girl,  “I know ‘disappointed’.”

And God help her, but Miranda is more turned around – more turned on – by this girl’s honest hurting than by any of the buff, kind, well-meaning boys she’s dated and dumped on her father’s command. She wants to wrap herself around that skinny body and just…she has no idea ‘just’ what, actually. It’s moot point anyway, since she’d just impale herself on the tiny spikes that decorate the other girl’s jacket, but there’s got to be something.

“You’re beautiful,” she blurts out, unthinking. Jack freezes, and Miranda’s thoughts flit right back to ‘murder’. Then the half-shaved head lifts slowly and suspicious eyes find hers, holding and searching for a long, breathless moment.

“Whatever,” the tattooed girl finally grumbles, getting to her feet and, somewhat belatedly, holding out a hand to the cheerleader. “C’mon. I’ll walk you back.”

Miranda guiltily allows her hand to linger in Jack’s, loathe to pull away but afraid of overstaying her welcome. It comes as quite the surprise, then, when scab-knuckled fingers tighten around hers and stay that way all the way back to the girls’ dorm.

“You,” the tattooed girl hesitates, looking off to one side and shifting uneasily. “You’re…not bad yourself.” Her grip tightens in a brief squeeze, then there’s a creak of leather and a thump of boots and she’s gone.

Miranda clenches her fingers into a fist, fighting to keep the memory of that fleeting, weirdly innocent clasp of hands. It’s gone almost as quickly as Jack, though, and she feels bereft, as if something precious has just slipped through her grasp.

 


	2. Validation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just hanging out together, being awkward.

Miranda’s walking the track after practice – she’s supposed to be running, but her fitness regimen is the last thing on her mind right now. Jack’s been gone since lunch, when she got into a fistfight with one of her teammates on the track team. The fight itself was inevitable, and honestly the heiress is surprised it’s taken this long to happen. Jack’s not known for her impulse-control or people skills, which is the main reason she chooses the most solitary sports on campus. 

She tries, though. The other girl, Alice something, has been insufferable ever since Jack was voted team captain. The tattooed girl turned it down of course, but who wants to achieve a goal by forfeit? Miranda can’t say she’d have been any less impossible in the same situation…at least, not before she met Jack. The runner has clearly been pushing the punk’s buttons for weeks now.

Still, a physical altercation is a quite serious issue at a prep school where nasty words are the weapons of choice. Rumours have been flying around ever since the fight, each more outrageous than the last. Jack’s been expelled, they say, she’s been taken to juvie for parole violations – the whole school still thinks she’s a criminal of some stripe – or she’s just run away. Miranda, for her part, tries not to think about it too hard. She doesn’t know anything and wondering will just distract her.

But then a car, a nondescript white thing, is pulling up in front of the dorms just as the sun begins to dip precipitously towards the horizon. A person climbs out. It’s impossible to tell for certain from this distance, but nevertheless Miranda’s positive that it must be Jack. It’s the middle of the week and nearly dinnertime; boarding students will still be on campus, day students will have long since gone home.

The figure disappears into the dorm building that Jack lives in, and Miranda finally begins to run the track, needing the rhythm of her feet to match the joyful pounding of her heart. Jack is back, she seems safe and sound, and although Miranda chooses not to question why that makes her feel so light on her feet, it does.

\- - - - - - - - - -

She doesn’t expect to see Jack again, at least not soon. So a few minutes later, when the skinny girl trudges across the grass – against the rules, of course – to the track, Miranda is taken aback. She slows to a jog, then comes to a stop at one end, waiting for the other girl to join her. Suddenly self-conscious, she finds herself running nervous fingers through her hair, adjusting the t-shirt she wears tucked into her running shorts to keep the lycra from chafing, wondering if the shorts make her look fat. She doesn’t need Jack’s approval, not really, but she can’t deny that she wants it, wants to know that the other girl finds her attractive. Somehow it’s nice, to have someone look at her with something other than calculation in their eyes…especially if that someone is Jack and that something is desire.

Now she’s worried that she’s being too blatant. She’s not trying to come on to the punk girl, but…well, maybe she is. A little.

She needn’t have worried; Jack’s attention is clearly elsewhere, and she doesn’t even seem to notice Miranda until she’s almost within arm’s reach. Then she jumps, as if startled, and looks away.

“Um, hey,” the tattooed girl mumbles, stuffing her hands in her pockets – not before Miranda catches a glimpse of thin bandages wrapped around her knuckles, though.

“Hey,” the heiress responds, feeling weirdly awkward in the face of the usually infallibly confident Jack’s apparent discomfort. “So, um…”

“Walk with me?” The offer is made in a voice more like the punk’s usual one, but her eyes are still cast to the side and she looks as if she’s awaiting rejection.

“Yeah, sure,” Miranda chirps quickly, relieved. They begin to walk, and for a while the only noise is the soft rubbery sound of Miranda’s sneakers playing counterpoint to the dull thumping of Jack’s hard-soled boots.

“So, um…” The tattooed girl finally breaks the silence. “How was your week?”

“Oh, um. Good. Fine, nothing interesting really.” She doesn’t add ‘until today’. The legacy – not daughter – of as important and influential a man as Henry Lawson is, of course, already a pro at reading people. She knows better than to push the envelope right now; if and when Jack wants to talk about the fight, she will.

Silence falls again, so long that Miranda’s beginning to wonder if she should just leave the other girl alone. It’s not until they’ve walked nearly a full circuit – one kilometer – that Jack finally opens her mouth again.

“I was never in jail, you know.” Her tone makes it sound like an aside, but the heiress refuses to be fooled. The tense set of her body hints at something both important and unhappy.

“I figured as much,” she breezes as casually as she can manage. She won’t admit that she had half-believed the rumours as recently as their first conversation a few weeks before. “I don’t think they’d have let you go to school here if you had. Actually,” she glances sidelong at her companion. Jack’s eyes dart to hers, then back away as if she’d embarrassed at so much as having looked. “I’m kind of surprised they let you go here with all the ink and stuff. Isn’t it against the rules?”

She hopes that steering the conversation in another direction will help ease the tense air creeping up around them, and it seems to work…for the moment. Jack chuckles dryly.

“Yeah well…they already made a bunch of exceptions for me, what’s one more? Only thing I can’t dodge is the uniform…at least during classes.”

“I hate to inform you,” Miranda returns with a small smile, “that I’m not sure I would call what you do ‘wearing’ the uniform, Jack. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be worn under a leather jacket and with combat boots.”

“Pfft, shows what you know!”

Jack runs forward for a few steps before turning and walking backwards, hands stuffed into her jacket pockets despite the warm weather and her eyes on Miranda for the first time.

The blue-eyed girl just raises her eyebrows questioningly, then waits patiently for her companion to string a sentence together.

“I…look, I’ve got a pretty fucked-up childhood, and I ended up here…not because I earned it. I just-“ she growls in frustration and tosses her head back, nearly tipping herself over backwards while Miranda tries to neither laugh nor judge. Jack regains her balance and tries again.

“I’m not where I am because I did something great to earn it or whatever. Like…” She turns to walk forwards again, and the words seem to flow more easily when she’s not looking at Miranda. “My whole life is there in front of me, and I’ve got goals and…and a future, and shit like that. This school, money, clothes, food. Safety. I didn’t earn any of that. To be honest, I should be dead by now.”

Miranda’s feet still mid-stride, and she almost falls over herself. She barely has the presence of mind to clap one hand over her mouth as she gapes at her tattooed friend.

“I’m not like sick or dying or whatever!” Jack tries to reassure her quickly, “I just…like…you know, the statistics say that kids like me, who come from the kinda shit I come from, don’t usually live this long. Me, I’m good. I’m fucking…I’m fucking golden.” She turns her gaze to the sky, where the sun has begun its nightly affair with the horizon and it staining the world red. Behind them, the first few stars are coming out. “Fucking golden,” she murmurs again.

The reassuring words do their job, but before the heiress can reply, she’s struck dumb by the sight of Jack, silhouetted against the brilliantly red sky. Hands in her pockets, delicate features and full lips in profile against the flaring light, she looks like a religious experience and Miranda desperately wants to kiss her. Belatedly, the cheerleader wonders if she should be questioning her sexuality right now.

Then the light fades a bit, and everything is returned to its regularly-scheduled earthly appearance.

Miranda finally manages to close her mouth and lower her hand, edging closer and fighting the urge to reach out and touch Jack for reassurance – whose, she’s not sure. She has to clear her throat several times before she can manage to speak. She knows she sounds a bit off, but she’s afraid if they lapse into silence again it might not be breakable.

“I don’t suppose you’re planning to give any more details than that?”

“Not really, no.” The answer is curt, but not angry – a simple statement of fact. Miranda gives up on that for the moment, another envelope she won’t push today.

“Alright then. So what did you want to talk about then?”

“Honestly? I wanted to tell somebody that I feel like a giant asshole and not have them tell me why I shouldn’t. Hey, tell me I’m a giant asshole.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what I feel like, and I want somebody to validate my fucking feelings for once!” Miranda flinches away momentarily from the rising anger in Jack’s voice, then stiffens her spine and gives it right back.

“Then yes, you are a giant asshole…for snapping at me when I all I did was ask you a question!”

Miranda tries not to fume while she waits for a response – telling herself not to be angry is only so effective, considering the emotional rollercoaster she’s been riding this evening. But then Jack speaks again, all the anger and some of the exhaustion gone from her voice, and the heiress can’t help but relax as well. She’s still a little irritated, but not enough to start a fight.

“Thanks,” the tattooed girl says softly, “I needed that. Some days I feel like I’m just this stupid little asshole kid who stepped out of a shithole and into a palace. Nobody kicked me out, but one of these days I’m gonna fuck up for real and then it’s right back to the hole. I’m so busy worrying about fucking up that I’m not thinking about how damn lucky I am, and then I feel like a giant asshole for not being grateful for shit that lots of people would happily stab me in the back for.” She flashes a mocking smile in the other girl’s direction, and juts out her chin as she continues. “I’d ask if you get me, but being born with a silver stick up your ass doesn’t make it seem likely.”

Miranda has learned – well, is learning – not to take too much offense at Jack’s crude words, and to give what she gets. If anything, the insult is cause for celebration; the fact that she’s even throwing venom out means that she’s well on the way to being herself again. 

The heiress draws even with the leather-clad girl and slips one hand into the closest pocket to her, gently threading her fingers between the hot, thin, slightly sweaty ones inside. Her thumb brushes over the bandages, and her voice is soft, overlaying the harsh words with the kind of tenderness neither girl is ready to put a name to.

“Better a stick up my ass than shit between my toes.”

Giving a small squeeze to the hand in hers, Jack responds in a similar voice, quiet and gentle and filled with the deepening emotion that lies between them.

“What the fuck ever. Fucking cheerleader.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does it seem like I’m being super mysterious about Jack’s past? Because I have it like 90% decided on but I scrapped every line where she talked about it because it’s supposed to be awkward hanging out, not emotionally tortured confessions of the past.


	3. Ask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure this one is up to par (at least as far as length) but I just can't seem to add to it. I'm going to take that as a sign that it's done and release it into the wild.

Their eyes meet as their lips move apart, and there is a long moment of stillness, broken only by fluttering eyelashes and slow, unsteady breathing. Just like that, their first kiss has come to an end.

Jack, at least, never wants it to end. Her hands are on Miranda’s hips, the synthetic material of her cheerleading uniform slick and foreign under her fingers, Miranda’s hips are notched against hers perfectly, hands tucked into the punk’s back pockets. If they pressed any closer, they’d be crawling inside each other, and Jack feels sexier, more powerful, more in-control than she ever has. At this moment, she feels as though she could take on the world.

“Ask me to prom,” Miranda says suddenly, and like that the moment is broken.

Thoughts erupt inside Jack’s head like a swarm of buzzing, stinging insects. She doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to handle the sudden request or the weight that comes with it...or the consequences that will follow it. The thoughts are making her head itch, her skull burn. And she lashes out.

“Are you fucking  _stupid_?” Jack demands, squeezing her eyes shut so she won’t have to meet Miranda’s stricken gaze. “Or just high? Shit! The hell are you thinking?”

The cheerleader tenses for a moment, clearly expecting something to make that question somewhat less biting, but nothing is forthcoming. She pulls away, tugging her hands free of Jack’s pockets and pushing the skinny girl back a step.

“I’m neither stupid nor high,” she snaps in return, her haughty, self-assured rich girl persona firmly back in place, “And I thought about it quite a bit, actually! Enough to know that there aren’t any rules against it.”

“What, and you think  _rules_  are gonna save you? Maybe you really are stupid.” Jack throws up her hands and turns away, head still shaking slowly. “Or just too fucking popular to know what it’s like at the bottom. Do you even  _know_  what people would say?”

Miranda crosses her arms over her chest and lifts her chin, countering in that same stuck-up tone of voice.

“I think the more appropriate question is: do I even  _care_  what people would say? And the answer is no.”

Jack whirls on her, rushes at her, pins her to the opposite wall of the small space. Miranda gasps in surprise before beginning to struggle, shocked at how firmly the smaller girl holds her place. Their faces are close, only a hand span apart now, labored breaths mingling in the space between them.

“You  _should_  care. You  _would_  care, if you really understood.” Jack’s angry hiss fades into a cooing falsetto, but her words are stark and angry. “Ooh, look at the dykes coming to prom together! I’d say they’ve got balls but they don’t cause they’re lesbos! Oh my god, is that Miranda Lawson with that crazy Jack girl? Isn’t she a criminal? Quick, somebody get a teacher...and a camera, I’m gonna need proof!”

Miranda scowls at her, hands still pushing – although more weakly now – against the front of the white ribbed tanktop and leather jacket. The lean body pinning hers doesn’t budge.

“I can make my own decisions, damn you! If you don’t want to go with me, then just say so!”

“And that’s just the beginning,” Jack continues in her own voice, completely ignoring Miranda’s reply. “This...thing we’ve got, it’ll be public. The whole fucking school’s gonna know! The students, the teachers, probably the damn parents...definitely your dad.”

Miranda’s face falls, and or an instant, Jack is certain she’s finally gotten through. Then the cheerleader’s chin goes right back up, her gaze clear and hard.

“I don’t care,” she repeats sharply. “He’s never happy with what anything I do anyway, but I’m not going to let him take this away from me.”

“God dammit!” Jack explodes then, beating one hand against the wall next to Miranda’s head. “Why are you so fucking stubborn!? This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, and considering where I come from...why are you so stuck on this!?”

“Because you haven’t said no.”

The cool words, unhesitating and painfully true, knife right through Jack’s angry façade. She holds herself away from the wall a little, arms fully extended and head hanging. She’d been hoping Miranda would just respond to her anger, but apparently the heiress has gotten to know her a little  _too_  well.

“You...you’re really willing to go public? To let the whole school – maybe the whole world, considering how famous your dad is – know that you’re dating someone like me?” Jack’s voice is weak, soft, and perhaps just a little hopeful, although she knows logically that this is a terrible idea and rules or not they’re both likely to face some serious shit over it.

“Yes,” Miranda replies equally softly, her arms once again sliding around Jack’s waist, although she bows to the solemnity of the moment and keeps her hands out of those oh-so-inviting back pockets. “Are you?”

“I...I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “But I really...” She pauses, takes a deep breath, tries to figure out a less-uncool way of saying it. Unfortunately none exists that she knows of, so she finally has to go forward with some of the wimpiest words she’s ever uttered. “I like you. A lot. And I...want to be with you, just like...all the fucking time, and I want you to be happy, and I want to go to prom with you. So I’ll ask you, okay? But not right now. I wanna make it good.”

Miranda just smiles that incandescent smile that makes her insides feel entirely too warm and soft, and then they’re kissing and kissing and kissing like the world’s going to fall down on them any minute. And they’re okay, at least for now.

 


End file.
